A portfolio of my past writing, and new stories as I develop them. Almost always deliberately funny.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

The NRR Project: ‘You’re A Grand Old Rag (Flag)’

A quick change of sheet music, in response to public demand.

“You’re
a Grand Old Rag (Flag)”

Music
and Lyrics: George M. Cohan

Singer:
Billy Murray

Recorded
Feb. 6, 1906

2:46

Brash is seemingly a word coined for George M. Cohan. The
performer/playwright/songwriter/director/producer, who started his stage career
at age 8, was one of the most popular and powerful figures in Broadway history.
From 1904 through 1920, he staged more than 50 productions there – all but one
successful. His songs such as “Yankee Doodle Dandy" and “Give My
Regards to Broadway” are, justly, classics. Onstage, he epitomized a kind of
cocky, hard-charging, quick-witted American persona that audiences responded to
with devotion for decades.

“Americanism” was in the air. The country was finally waking
up from self-absorption and internal development and was beginning to make its
first expansionist stretches, jumping into jingoism with a will. Its industrial
might was wowing the world. There was need for a vernacular expression of this
energy and pride, akin to the already-popular marches of Sousa.

As a multiple talent, Cohan resembles impresario
predecessors such as Dion Boucicault and David Belasco, as well as his
contemporary Florenz Ziegfeld. Most of his plays are comic vehicles touched with
sentiment, their plots driven by the confusions of romantic entanglements –
early, important gropings toward the book musical.

“The Grand Old Rag,” as it was listed in the original
program, was a generally despised title. No one wanted to hear the Stars and
Stripes referred to in that way. The lyrics changed from “You’re a grand old
rag/You’re a high-flying flag” to “You’re a grand old flag/Though you’re torn
to a rag” to, finally, the redundant but unobjectionable “You’re a grand old
flag/You’re a high-flying flag.”

Unfortunately, the song had already been recorded. Popular
tenor Billy Murray, the “Denver Nightingale” (he lived in the Mile High City
from age 5 to 16) was another peppy, confident belter who could sell an upbeat
song. It’s instructive to see that the song was recorded six days before the
musical opened – marketing savvy is not as recent a development as we might
think.

(Murray wound up recording all three lyric variants.)

The words and music are patriotic hodgepodges, interpolating
“Dixie,” “Auld Lang Syne,” “Marching through Georgia,” and Cohan’s own “Yankee
Doodle Dandy” hit of two years previous. The result is a sensory overload of
associations, delivered in an up-tempo rush that sweeps the listener along. We will run into Cohan again in a future installment, when we examine his classic of evangelical interventionism, 1917's "Over There."

The
National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all
the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up
next: the Frances Densmore Chippewa/Ojibwe Cylinder Collection.

About Me

This award-winning independent writer and editor returned to the place where he grew up after years as a wandering comedian. It's beautiful here. He served in a variety of capacities for the Boulder International Film Festival from 2006 through 2014. His writing portfolio includes stories written on topics ranging from grand opera to midget wrestling, for a diverse array of magazines, newspapers and websites worldwide -- including Film International, Westword, Boulder Magazine, Power Pickin', Parterre, Understanding Our Gifted, Movie Habit, Backstage, Muso, 5280, EnCompass, Senses of Cinema, Boulder Jewish News and . . . Philly Sports Faithful, for some reason. Also poet, playwright, screenwriter, blah blah blah. Check out his work at brad-weismann.com, filmpatrol.com and obitpatrol.com.

PM Dawn; Of the Heart Of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience

Ramones, Ramonesmania

Richard and Linda Thompson, Pour Down Like Silver

Richard Pryor, Wanted

Richard Thompson, Henry the Human Fly

Robert Klein, New Teeth

Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma/Carousel/The King and I

Roger Miller, The Return of Roger Miller

Rolling Stones, Some Girls

Shostakovich, Symphony #4 - Inbal, Wiener Symphoniker

Sibelius, Symphony 5 (final version) -- Vanska, Lahti Symphony

Sly and the Family Stone, Anthology

Steeley Dan, Pretzel Logic

Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life

Stravinsky, Les Noces -- Bernstein

Strength in Numbers, The Telluride Sessions

Talking Heads, Fear of Music

The Kingston Trio, The Kingston Trio

The Kinks, Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One

The Mothers, Cruisin' with Ruben and the Jets

The Mothers, We're Only in It for the Money

The Velvet Underground & Niko

Tom Tom Club, Tom Tom Club

Tom Waits, Nighthawks at the Diner

Uncle Earl, Waterloo Tennessee

Van Morrison, Beautiful Vision

Village Music of Bulgaria/Bulgarian Folk Music

Vivaldi, The Four Seasons -- Zuckerman

Was (Not Was), Born to Laugh at Tornadoes

Ween, Chocolate and Cheese

Willie Dixon, The Chess Box

Willie Nelson, Shotgun Willie

XTC, English Settlement

" . . . you've got to stand up for the imaginative world, the imaginative element in the human personality, because I think that's constantly threatened . . . People do have imagination and sensibilities, and I think that does need constant exposition." -- John Read

"To disseminate my subjective thoughts and ideas, I stealthily hide them in a cloak of entertaining storytelling, since the depth of my thinking, shallow at best, might be challenged by erudite experts." -- Curt Siodmak